The Renault engine fitted to Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull for this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix has already contested to Grands Prix, it has been confirmed.

The 23-year-old German looked on course to take race victory at the Korean Grand Prix two weekends ago when the Renault engine blew up.

The French company, which supplies customer units to Red Bull Racing, confirmed that the V8 unit being fitted to Vettel’s RB6 for this weekend’s round has plenty of mileage on it already.

“It is the engine from Italy and Singapore,” Renault’s customer programme boss Fabrice Lom told Auto Motor und Sport, and he also confirmed that the engine failure was due to a connecting rod going in one of the cylinders.

“It has a mileage of 1,066 kilometres,” he added.

The blown engine had run about 1,600km of its project 2,000km lifespan.

A DNF for Vettel – who lies exactly 25 points behind championship leader Fernando Alonso – this weekend will rule him out of championship contention.